


Measuring the Distance

by tray_la_la



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-14
Updated: 2010-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:15:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tray_la_la/pseuds/tray_la_la
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Higher magical education proves that Hermione still has much to learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Measuring the Distance

~

_Thoughts_

The professor is busy giving a detailed explanation of Applied Arithmancy's grading rubric, but Hermione isn't listening; she looked it up weeks ago, the information now carefully printed on the inside cover of her diary. Frankly, she's surprised more people didn't do the same.

While she waits for the rest of the class to catch up, Hermione studies her fellow students, seizing the opportunity to do so before actual lessons begin and her full attention is required. It feels strange that Padma's is the only face she recognises. Wrong, even. It's been so long since she's been in a room full of strangers.

The professor starts in on the syllabus, but Hermione's mind stays adrift; she's memorised their assignments through the Easter holidays. Done examining those students whose faces she can see from her seat, Hermione stares unseeing at the back of Padma's head. She watches the light bounce blue and black off Padma's midnight-dark hair and wonders how Harry and Ron's first day of training is going. How long it will take for introductions to be over, and for the real learning to begin. And that's when it happens.

Padma moves.

She reaches up and wraps her fingers around the long, thick plait that hangs halfway down her back, pulling it over her shoulder to drape in her lap. Padma slips her fingers into the strands at the back of her neck, into that place right before they tuck and twist into the plait, and Hermione is sitting close enough to see the wetness at Padma's nape. For a moment, she thinks she can smell the sweat on Padma's skin, dark and earthy and secret, and she leans forward in her seat and breathes deeply through her nose.

Padma's fingers fall away from her neck and Hermione fixates on the smooth caramel skin there. She wonders what it looks like elsewhere on Padma's body. Not just on the curve of her neck, but on the slope of her breasts, wrapped around her hips and buttocks. Framed around the pink between Padma's legs.

Hermione sits bolt upright, her body jittery, and she can't breath all of a sudden. Her clothes are too tight and she's hot – far too hot to be sitting in this classroom, listening to the professor drone on about the format of the final exam. She grips the edges of her desk and wraps her calves around the legs of her chair; she'd look like a fool if she ran out on the first day.

Closing her eyes, Hermione takes a deep breath, but behind her eyelids are dark nipples and a warm, open smile, and she thinks she may actually pass out before all around her feet start to shuffle and chairs scrape against the floor in the rush for the door.

Hermione opens her eyes and exhales hard, rising from her desk on shaky legs. She exits the classroom quickly, trying not to catch anyone's eye on her way out.

_Words_

Hermione's learned to expect it: the heat, the sudden feeling of too-tight clothing and too little skin. The sharp pain in her chest that pushes the breath from her lungs and makes her eyes widen, mouth gasping around air it can seem to pull inside. Every time, it's because of Padma, Hermione knows that now. She just doesn't know what to do with it, this knowledge. It's the first time she's ever felt that way.

At the moment, she and Padma are sharing a desk in the library. The room smells musty, like sheets of parchment and stale ink, and it's at least twice the size of the library at Hogwarts, but Hermione's barely noticed.

Instead, her eyes trace a path from the top left corner of her textbook – edged out in the middle of the table, across the imaginary line she's drawn down the center – to the top right corner of Padma's identical tome. Hermione silently measures the distance, weighs it. She lets the number sit on her tongue for a moment because, again, she's not quite sure what to do with this information. She just feels the need to collect it, to quantify her feelings, somehow.

Hermione studies Padma's dark head bent low over her notes, the long thick plait piled on the tabletop beside her, and feels hot again. She prays the feeling passes quickly, because she really doesn't want to have to leave the library. She's dashed to the loo between classes three times this week – back pressed against the stall door as she pushes a hand inside her robes – and it's only a matter of time before she's caught.

Hoping for a distraction, Hermione turns her attention to Padma's notes. Padma's writing is familiar now – half in cursive, half in script – and Hermione wants to ask how Padma decides which letters get which treatment. Instead, she learns each one by heart: the wide, loopy Ps crowding the letters that follow it. The Es, little more than dashes, as if Padma's too focused on the word up ahead to finish the previous one up properly.

The written words aren't enough though; Hermione wants to see Padma's mouth moving over them. She wants to know if they're as lovely on Padma's lips as they are on parchment. If her mouth puckers around the Ps, keeping the rest of the word on hold. If she rushes past the Es, leaving her words open-ended in her eagerness to finish a thought.

Hermione shakes her head. When did she become so _romantic_? She scolds herself, until Padma looks up from her notes and smiles, and then all the words in Hermione's head suddenly seem to rhyme.

_Deeds_

Hermione ducks into the stacks and leans back against the shelves housing Medicinal Herbs through Medieval Warlocks. She immediately buries one hand in the skirt of her robes, her cunt already slick, the other pinching tight around a nipple. She feels reckless and desperate, but if she doesn't do this now she won't survive the rest of the day's revision.

Silently urging herself on as her fingers move roughly against her clit, Hermione still has the presence of mind to wonder how she got to this point: rationalising a quick go in the library while her Advanced Transfiguration partner waits for her to return with a fresh set of textbooks. She tells herself not to think too much about it – a familiar entreaty these past few weeks – and concentrates on the task at hand.

Hermione slips a finger inside herself, biting her lip around a small moan, when the torch above her head flickers to life. She freezes, hands everywhere they shouldn't be, and peers down the other end of the aisle just as Padma emerges at the mouth of the stacks, heading straight towards her.

As usual, Padma's face betrays nothing, as serious and resolute as when she's working on a particularly difficult Rune translation, and Hermione can't stand it all of a sudden. For weeks, she's dreamed about Padma's skin, her hair. Memorised the shape of her mouth around vowels and the way her quill moves when she signs her name. But Hermione wants more than an unflappable study partner whose habits she's endlessly cataloguing, the distance between them measured and unchanging.

Padma finally reaches her, and Hermione knows that less than half a metre separates them now. She steels herself for a moment before lifting her eyes to Padma's, holding Padma's gaze as she slowly moves her hand inside her robes. Her clit is swollen and sensitive, and she's even wetter than before; however this ends, it'll be over soon.

She rubs her clit faster, hips tilting up to meet her frantic fingers, back arching against the rows of books supporting her weight. Padma's face is impassive, but Hermione notices the way her eyes dilate as she watches Hermione touch herself, nostrils flaring around quickening breath.

The pressure in Hermione's clit starts to build and her stomach clenches in anticipation, body poised on that precipice right before the floor drops out from under her. She bites her lip to stop from crying out as the muscles in her legs tighten and her orgasm rushes through her, the back of her head falling roughly against a sharp edge of the bookcase. Her eyes squeeze shut and it's almost too much – she might actually break under the force of it – but she doesn't let up, moving against herself until it's almost painful.

The pleasure recedes from her limbs, leaving them hollow and shaky, and Hermione's eyes drift open as she starts to come back to herself. Padma catches her wrist as it falls from beneath her robes, and Hermione stops breathing as Padma lifts her hand to her mouth and laves each finger with her tongue. Her fingers slip from Padma's lips a moment later, and Padma smiles up at her, somehow both daring and shy. Promising.

Suddenly, Hermione doesn't regret the countless hours spent tracking Padma's every gesture, measuring the space between them at every turn. Padma's smile, Hermione's taste on Padma's lips, is finally something Hermione understands.

Hermione wraps her hand around the back of Padma's neck and kisses her hard; a promise in return. Because, yes, this is definitely information Hermione knows what to do with.

~


End file.
